


Shackled

by watcherofworlds



Series: Whumptober 2019 [9]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Episode: s05e17 Kapiushon, Gen, Prompt Fill, Whumptober, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-12-07 17:02:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20979332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watcherofworlds/pseuds/watcherofworlds
Summary: Prompt fill for Whumptober Day 9 "Shackled"





	Shackled

There wasn’t any way to keep track of time in whatever dungeon Chase had him chained up in, but Oliver was reasonably certain that he’d been struggling to free himself for hours, all nothing. Talia was right- she’d never taught him how to escape from shackles, and similar lessons from Anatoly had only ever covered handcuffs and zip ties. Still, he had to _ try _ . Chase had threatened Felicity, had threatened  _ William _ , and then he had left. He’d been gone for what must have been hours- the entire time length of time Oliver had been struggling to break free of his shackles and chains so far- and there was no telling what he had done or could do in that amount of time. The safety- the lives- of Felicity and William and everyone else Oliver cared about depended on him finding a way to escape.

Feeling desperation threaten to overwhelm him at the thought of just how long he’d been trying to do exactly that to no avail, Oliver did his best to consider the problem analytically. His ability to keep a cool head in a crisis had gotten him out of worse situations than this. There was no reason why he should allow it to fail him now.

_ Every chain has a weak link _ , he thought. _ I just have to find it. _ To that end, he braced his feet against the metal ring that held the chain attached to his shackles to the floor, wrapped the chain around his hands, and pulled on it as hard as he could, trying to find a weakness either in the chain itself or in the ring in the floor. He found none. The ring in the floor didn’t budge in even so much as an inch, and he felt none of the particular kind of give in the chain that indicated that it was shearing apart at a weak point. This wasn’t like the time that Malcolm Merlyn had left him chained up to keep him out of the way of the Undertaking but had made the mistake of attaching the chain to a loose, rusted pipe in the ceiling. Chase, it seemed, was smart enough not to have made such an error.

But even now that he knew that there was no obvious weakness in the shackles and chain that held him prisoner, Oliver wasn’t about to give up. He had to keep trying. He had to find some way to escape, for the sake of Felicity and William and everyone else he cared about if not for his own sake.

Struggling to his feet, Oliver pulled on the chain with all of his strength, leaning so far backward that his feet slid out from under him and he fell onto his back hard enough to knock the wind out of him. He lay still for a few minutes until he got his breath back, then resumed trying to yank on the chain until it broke. And it would have to break eventually. He knew that every chain, however strong or well constructed, had a weak link somewhere, and eventually that weak link would have to give way.

Oliver struggled with the chain until his shackles had chafed his wrists so much that they bled and the arrow wounds in his shoulder burned, leaving him in even greater agony than he’d already been in, but all for nothing. He couldn’t break the chain no matter how hard he tried, and, as he’d painfully reminded of over the last few hours, he didn’t know how to break out of shackles. All the escape techniques he knew didn’t work on them, though not for lack of trying. He still kept trying, because he didn’t know what else to do, but his attempts were half hearted, lacking any force behind them and fueled mostly by desperation. He no longer possessed the energy or the strength, not to mention being in far too much pain, to put as much into his escape attempts as he had been for the last few hours.

After a time, Oliver heard footsteps on concrete, growing louder as they drew nearer. Chase was returning, probably with some new torture to inflict on him.

“You tried to escape,” Chase said when he entered Oliver’s cell and saw his raw and bleeding wrists. “That’s hilarious.” There was a long silence as he strode the rest of the way into Oliver’s cell and circled him like a shark that had scented blood.

“I’m nowhere near done with you yet,” he said, coming to stand between Oliver and the cell door. “You’re not getting out of here until I let you out, and that’s not happening until you give me what I want.”


End file.
